The morning of Tuesday Nov. 13, 1956 began like most others in west Ottawa. The weather was typical for mid-November, with sub-zero temperatures overnight leading to chilly mornings for commuters travelling into the city for work or school. On this particular morning the temperature hovered around zero, and the skies were largely cloudy. A dull November morning in Ottawa, but it would not stay that way for long.
The Ottawa Transit Commission was still running streetcars in 1956, but the writing was on the wall for their future. The trams were losing the city big money. The City had acquired the streetcar line from the privately-operated Ottawa Electric Railway in 1950 for the incredible price of $6.3 million. It did not take long for the evidence to flood in that it was a bad deal. It would be a little over a year later that the City would announce that they would be scrapping the entire streetcar service.
The entire streetcar line from Britannia Into downtown would take between 35 to 40 minutes. It ran along Byron to Holland, passed the Somerset bridge into Preston, and then to its final destination.
On that November morning, streetcars were coming through Westboro heading east every five minutes or so. It was business as usual. One in particular was driven by conductor Yvon D’Aoust, which passed through McKellar Park and Westboro just before 8:30.
The train was packed and full. It was standing room only with about 70 passengers on board, largely students and office workers. At the same moment that morning, Gaston Regimbal of Forward Avenue — a 24-year-old truck driver with the Frazer Duntile Company —was driving his full 20-ton dump truck northbound on Churchill Avenue. The truck was full with 17 tons of rock recently mined from Frazer Duntile quarry at Clyde Avenue.
Regimbal was driving at what he later estimated was about 10 miles per hour, and was approaching the Churchill hill, when he noticed the Churchill Public School traffic patrol flagging him down to stop.
“I eased on the brakes and nothing happened,” Regimbal later told the Ottawa Journal. “I thought for a second I could swing east into Byron avenue but there were some kids standing on the corner.”
He considered wheeling around the children, but at that very moment, a car rolled up to the westbound Byron Avenue stop sign at Churchill. When Regimbal realized he wasn’t going to be able to stop the truck, he spun his wheel to the left in an effort to simply swing the truck around the streetcar, in the hopes of avoiding an oncoming car as well. He miscalculated by 10 feet.
“When the truck hit the tram, an avalanche of rock cascaded over its cab roof. The heavy stones crashed through the cab windows among the passengers. Oddly, none of the big rocks hit the crowded tram occupants.” wrote the Ottawa Citizen at the time. “Crushed stone burst into the street car through shattered windows, showering passengers with broken glass and debris.”
The incident could have been a lot worse
Regimbal told reporters later: “There was a terrible crashing sound and people began to scream. I cut the power at once, and threw over the lever which controls the doors. The front doors opened immediately, but the back doors were jammed.” He added that after the initial shock there was little or no panic among the passengers, and all of them filed out quickly through the front doors. “Some were bleeding about the face and head, and a few had to be helped, but it seemed apparent, almost at once, that no one had been killed or badly injured.”
The truck driver himself was shaken up and had cuts to his head and face.
Miraculously, no one was killed. There were 10 injuries, but none of them major, beyond cuts and bruises. If the streetcar wasn’t there, the truck instead would have barreled down the hill on Churchill towards the much busier Richmond Road intersection out of control and gaining speed, during the peak of the morning rush hour. The results would have been devastating.
Someone asked Regimbal why he hadn’t tried his hand brake. “Ever try to stop 10 tons with your arm?” he asked back.
Conductor D’Aoust also shared his account of what happened.
“We were over the crossing and almost stopped — in fact barely moving — for the passenger pick-up, when wham-bam, it sounded and felt like a bomb had hit us,” the streetcar driver said. “The back of the car was jarred and jolted up and over almost to the west-bound track. Then there were shouts and screams and the tinkle of falling glass. We were lucky; everybody could get out under their own power.”
The injured were all taken to the Civic Hospital. Every available doctor and nurse was waiting when the injured began to arrive. A nurse reported, “We did not know how bad the accident was, and we were ready for anything. When they began to come in there was a lot of blood in evidence, but we realized quickly that we had nothing more serious than some nasty cuts and ugly-looking bruises to take care of.”
Injured were Regimbal (the truck driver), D’Aoust (the tram operator), and passengers Donald Stevens, 40, Mabel McGovern, 31, Bruce Keeler, 15, Lloyd Gore, 14, Paulette Lacosse, 10, John Gleeson, 12, Dalton Parks, 16, and William Croshaw, 14.
Survivors called it a “miracle”
“I was sitting in the seat nearest the window when the truck hit,” recounted survivor Stevens. “It’s a miracle that I escaped with only these cuts. The rock slammed in among us. There was a great swirl of dust and a lot of screaming and then we started sorting ourselves out.” Mr Stevens was swabbing several bloody cuts on the side of his face and the back of his neck with his handkerchief while telling the papers his story.
Mabel McGovern was located at the front of the streetcar, standing, when it was hit. “I didn’t see a thing,” she said. “First thing I know I was looking at the car floor. The impact flung me on my face in the aisle. The thing I can’t understand is that it was my ankles that were hurt.”
Bruce Keeler was sitting in one of the rear seats facing south on Churchill and saw the truck approaching. “I ducked my face in my hands and waited,” he said. “It was a terrific jolt.”
Harold Watson, 23, was sitting on a side seat at the rear, reading a newspaper. “Suddenly I was hurled forward out of the seat and people standing in the aisle were bowled over like ninepins. Broken glass flew around my head and one jagged piece ripped right through my newspaper. But I wasn’t even scratched by the glass. All I got was a bruise above the left knee. That must have been when I was thrown to the floor.”
Paulette Lacasse, 10 years old, had been standing in the aisle. “I was never so scared. I was so frightened after it happened. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know for a minute what had happened, but I was sure it was awful.”
Dalton Parks was one of two boys from Stittsville on the streetcar, and reported a “tremendous crash” when the truck hit. “The street car seemed to lift up in the air for a minute. I thought it was going to turn over but it didn’t.”
Interestingly, Churchill Avenue just prior to the accident had been targeted as a concern by local residents, who complained that it was being used by heavy commercial traffic as a cut-through between Richmond Road and Carling Avenue. Local truck traffic was permitted at the time, but not through-trucking.
Area police were also busy that morning with another train-truck accident. Ironically, just twenty minutes after the Byron-Churchill collision, a separate accident took place in Hull, which saw a 55-year-old Gatineau Point man killed. An Ottawa to Montreal CPR passenger train struck a panel truck at a level crossing on St. Henri Street at 8:50 a.m.